Samuel Rubin on the Founding of the Transnational Institute

I hesitate very much to address a room made up of scholars and scientists, when I can say only that I represent the business community, not as its delegate but as an individual. An individual who has spent his lifetime in the business world viewing the benefits of what is commonly known as capitalism and at the same time recognizing its many defects and deficiencies. In addition, I must make known that I fail to attend the schools of higher learning, that most of you here have derived so much benefit from. So all you can have from me is perhaps a humanist approach to the problems that concern the people of the world that we refer to.

In my jugdment, as I travel the world, as I deal with the world, as I relate to the intellectuals in our country and in yours and in other countries, it does not surprise me at all, to find that when we compile all of the factors that make the world as it is today, we seem to be living within one common denominator and perhaps with one appreciation of how and where the world seems to be headed for.

What I may be expressing this evening will be an effort to give you a realistic appraisal of one who views the working of the world through the eyes of a realistic industrialist. One, who questions how much longer the industrial society, the industrial powers, how much longer we, if I count myself as one among them, how much more life we have ahead of us, because of our own failure to recognize the weakness and the lack of intelligence that we are applying to the working of the world.

Since there may be an agreement that the world is suffering from war, that the world is suffering from inequities. That the world is suffering from inhuman treatment of perhaps better than two thirds of the inhabitants of the world, as a realist, a non scholar, a practical business-minded person, it would appear to me that if that would be given to me as a businessman to solve as a universal problem, I would say, that since the problems are common, let us get together to examine them and to see what answer we can collectively produce that may perhaps deliver us as a humanity, as a human race into a world that would be different from the world we are living in today. A world where the values would be different and a world of greater equities.

Now without being a sociologist, an anthropologist, a political scientist, I do not need to be told that so many of us, individually, and so many organisations are splintered, fragmented, are not working together, though the objectives appear to be the same. This is the weakness of the many and perhaps the strength of the few.

We have all read in the press in the past few days, that some twelve important nations, representing both the East and the West, came to a decision, that they had better work together to cement their relationship, to cement or perhaps to prevent their debacle, their disintegration. And as I interpret it, the possible reason for the establishment, this 12-nation organisation with its headquarters in an old castle in Vienna.

It was my impression that this establishment, this new organisation, was really created more out of fear than out of something that might be considered constructive in the interest of the world. If that is true, and, in addition, if it also may be true that the possible establishment of this 12-nation kartel, this organisation is to whither away further the initial purpose of the institution and the organisation of the United Nations - perse, to reduce its strength and its impact further. We, who see a different world and a world established for different reasons, should use that as an inspiration.
To get together ourselves, not necessarily twelve of us, but hundreds of scholars from different parts of the world under one roof, which we plan to help to facilitate and with an understanding that I should like very much to leave with you people that it is not intended to be an institution or an establishment that is a branch of an institute in Washington, but rather a capital of the world made up of representative scholars of the world.

And it is for that reason essentially, it is that element that I should like to clarify more than any other single factor. I do not need to be told of the fear of the dominance of the American power, even the dominance of the American intellectual community. We have graduated, we have experienced how much damage that can do to the world. We come here, fully prepared to say that we invite you to work with us and we would hope that you invite us to work with you, and I do not mean exclusively scholars and scientists in France, but scholars and scientists of the world.

The end result is to be a capital of the world, as Vienna is to be a capital of this new kartel, designed to study and author to the people of the world, to the various organizations of the world, a plan, a source for study, a climate that will be congenial, a climate that can stimulate thinking and a climate that, hopefully, will produce a plan that may serve as the ground work and a ground work only of what is referred to here as a new society.

This is my simple contribution to this dinner.